Broadband/Voip- the future?

[krazyace5]

I was going to sign up for Vonage but it is not available in my area, I found a competing service through a business I have, and it is available in my area. I am thinking about promoting this but want to make sure it is a decent service.

Any of you have voip? How do you like it? What are some pros and cons?

I have signed up myself but will not get my box until tomorrow or Friday.

Any feedback on voip is appreciated.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

I am one of the world's foremost experts on this, so I will try to give you some advice:

VOIP is the future in the sense that in future all voice will be transferred as data packages. This makes the whole idea of having separate networks for transporting voice and data obsolote. So in the future you will have only 1 access to your house for all communication (if it will be DSL, fiber, wireless or something else is still not clear).

Do you need a IP-phone now? No specific need actually since operators still provide you with traditional voice access (which they will stop doing much sooner than many people grasp (reasons to this demands its own essay)). Basically now you should choose on a price/quality-decision.

How will the quality be? All the IP-phones, adapters for connecting analog/dialup-phones, servers for IP-telephony and protocols for IP-telephony today are well-tested 99,999% solutions and works for all practical matters all the time. Thus the crucial part is all elements between your phone and the provider. Most critical factors are the quality of your DSL-access (mainly how oversubscrided is the line from your area to the DSL-provider's main center) and the quality of the line between the DSL-provider's main center and the VOIP-provider. It means asking here for advice is helpless, since it can work super for them while it will suck at your place. Get some deal where you can try it.

[HtotheNootch]

I was involved in a start-up VoIP play. It's a good technology. However, it seems that most want to view it as an evolutionary step, rather than an evolutionary one. In other words rather than make it an adjunct to the PSTN at first, and then make it the standard, most VoIP plays spent their time tying in to the PSTN. While that's convenient, it's not the most efficienct use of VoIP.

That said, if you have a good deal on one of those "broadband phone companies" I wouldn't discourage you from using it.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

[ QUOTE ]
I was involved in a start-up VoIP play. It's a good technology. However, it seems that most want to view it as an evolutionary step, rather than an evolutionary one. In other words rather than make it an adjunct to the PSTN at first, and then make it the standard, most VoIP plays spent their time tying in to the PSTN. While that's convenient, it's not the most efficienct use of VoIP.


[/ QUOTE ]

It is mainly due to the fact that VOIP-penetration is still low and thus most interconnects between voice providers are "PSTN-based" (a technically wrong use of the term but you get my point). However, they are now changing the cores of their traditional PSTNs to IP since it reduces their transportation costs and due to this and other factors most interconnects soon will be IP. Then you might conduct fully IP-calls.

[Chicanist]

[ QUOTE ]
I was involved in a start-up VoIP play. It's a good technology. However, it seems that most want to view it as an evolutionary step, rather than an evolutionary one. In other words rather than make it an adjunct to the PSTN at first, and then make it the standard, most VoIP plays spent their time tying in to the PSTN. While that's convenient, it's not the most efficienct use of VoIP.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is mostly for business reasons. Why would anyone sign up for a VoIP service if they could only contact other people on eg Vonage, Lingo, etc?

Also, from the carrier perspective, if the cross-office network is IP based instead of TDM based, they realize a huge (sometimes as much as 8x-10x) savings on their internal costs which either means more profit or cheaper phone calls dpending on the company.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

That's why they will stop offering TDM-accesses. They do it now, since the market is willing to pay more for it than IP, but when customers' pay willingness becomes techonology neutral; the carriers will stop offering TDM.